BAKU, December 1st - RIA “Novosti”, Geray Dadashev. In Baku the three-day sitting of the international youth conference of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) member states was opened. Representatives of youth NGOs from 35 OIC member states and Russia took part in the forum.

Sheikh Allakhshukyur Pashazade, head of the Caucasian Muslim Religious Administration, opening the conference, declared that the Muslim youth has to resist to forces, “which wish to sow discord and arouse conflicts among Muslims”. He also called young Muslims to avert the use of Islamic ideas for terror, aggression, violence and conflict”.

Rafik Ali, head of the Azerbaijanian State Committee for the Work with Religious Organizations, said during his presentation that for the integration of the youth of Islamic countries “there is a wide social basis, a common ideology, financial opportunities and an organizational basis, represented by the intellectual potential of people living in Islamic countries”.

Within the framework of the conference the role of youth in international and socio-political life and the participation of youth in the globalization process and in the anti-globalization movement will be discussed.

After the first part of the sitting Aliev said in an interview with RIA “Novosti” that “the youth organization at the OIC by no means must be given a religious tinge or from the very beginning turned into a mere Islamic organization. We live in a secular world, and Azerbaijan is a secular state. We hold our religion in respect, it is a component of our ideology, but it does not and must dominate”.

According to Aliev the increasing role of religion in today’s world is connected with “those attacks on the Islam, organized by the Western world, which in the Islamic world rouses an instinct of self-protection and the need to develop religion, in order to base ourselves on an own fundament for the protection from unjustified attacks from the West and the USA”.

In his opinion, Islam and Christianity have the possibility to develop political influence on the governments, too. “The main thing is to use these possibilities constructively and not destructively, as it happens now, and not to focus on resistance but on a dialogue between the faiths in order to avoid negative moments”, he emphasized.